It must be borne in mind that all this time the prisons were primarily places of detention, not of punishment. The bulk of those committed to their safe keeping were accused persons awaiting trial in due process of law, or debtors; and of these again by far the most numerous class were the impecunious and the unfortunate, whom a mistaken system locked up and deprived of all means of paying their liabilities. Now and again an offender was sentenced to be imprisoned in default of payment of fine, or to pass the intervals between certain periods of disgraceful exposure on the pillory. Imprisonment had as yet no regular place in the code of penalties, and the jail was only the temporary lodging of culprits duly tried and sentenced according to law. The punishment most in favour in these ruthless times was death. The statute-book bristled with capital felonies, and the gallows was in perpetual requisition. These were days when the pickpocket was hanged; so was the sheep-stealer, and the forger of one-pound notes. Well might Sir Samuel Romilly, to whose strenuous exertions the amelioration of the penal code is in a great measure due, declare that the laws of England were written in blood. But even then there was another and a less sanguinary penalty. The deportation of criminals beyond seas grew naturally out of the laws which prescribed banishment for certain offences. The Vagrancy Act of Elizabeth’s reign contained in it the germ of transportation, by empowering justices in quarter sessions to banish offenders and order them to be conveyed into such parts beyond the seas as should be assigned by Her Majesty’s privy council. Full effect was given to this statute in the next reign, as is proved by a letter of James I., dated 1619, in which the king directs “a hundred dissolute persons” to be sent to Virginia. Another Act of similar tenor was passed in the reign of Charles II., in which the term “transportation” appears to have been first used. A further and more systematic development of the system of transportation took place in 1718, when an Act was passed by which offenders who had escaped the death penalty were handed over to contractors, who engaged to transport them to the American colonies. These contractors were vested with a property in the labour of the convicts for a certain term, generally from seven to fourteen years, and this right they frequently sold. Labour in those early days was scarce in the new settlements; and before the general adoption of negro slavery there was a keen competition for felon hands. The demand was indeed so great that it produced illegal methods of supply. An organized system of kidnapping prevailed along the British coasts; young lads were seized and sold into what was practically white slavery in the American plantations. These malpractices were checked, but the legitimate traffic in convict labour continued until it was ended peremptorily by the revolt of the American colonies and the achievement of their independence. In 1776 the British legislature, making a virtue of necessity, discovered that transportation to His Majesty’s colonies (which three years previously had declared their independence) was bound to be attended by various inconveniences, particularly by depriving the kingdom of many subjects whose labour might be useful to the community; and an Act was accordingly passed which provided that convicts sentenced to transportation might be employed at hard labour at home. At the same time the consideration of some scheme for their disposal was entrusted to three eminent public men—Sir William Blackstone, Mr Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland), and John Howard. The result of their labours was an Act for the establishment of penitentiary houses, dated 1778. This Act is of peculiar importance. It contains the first public enunciation of a general principle of penal treatment, and shows that even at that early date the system since nearly universally adopted was fully understood. The object in view was thus stated. It was hoped, by sobriety, cleanliness, and medical assistance, by a regular series of labour, by solitary confinement during the intervals of work, and by due religious instruction, to preserve and amend the health of the unhappy offenders, to inure them to habits of industry, to guard them from pernicious company, to accustom them to serious reflexion, and to teach them both the principles and practice of every Christian and moral duty. The experience of a century has added nothing to these the true principles of penal discipline; they form the basis of every species of prison system carried out since the passing of the Act 19 Geo. III. c. 74 in 1779.

The first step towards giving effect to this Act was the appointment of a commission of three “supervisors” to select and acquire a site for the first penitentiary house. Howard was one, and no doubt the most influential, of these; but he could not agree with his colleagues as to the most suitable situation. One was for Islington, another for Limehouse, while Howard insisted upon some site which was healthy, well supplied with water, and in such a convenient spot that it could be readily visited and inspected. It is interesting to observe that the great philanthropist anticipated modern English practice in his preparation of the plans for the construction of the prison. He was strongly of opinion that the penitentiary should be built by convict labour, just as in recent years the new prison has been erected at Wormwood Scrubs, and large blocks added to the prisons of Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dartmoor. Howard, however, withdrew from the commission, and new supervisors were appointed, who were on the eve of commencing the first penitentiary when the discoveries of Captain Cook in the South Seas turned the attention of the Government towards these new lands. The vast territories of Australasia promised an unlimited field for convict colonization, and for the moment the scheme for penitentiary houses fell to the ground. Public opinion generally preferred the idea of establishing penal settlements at a distance from home. “There was general confidence,” says Merivale in his work on colonization, “in the favourite theory that the best mode of punishing offenders was that which removed them from the scene of offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of space from all their former connexions, and gave them the opportunity of redeeming past crimes by becoming useful members of society.” These views so far prevailed that an expedition consisting of nine transports and two men-of-war, the “first fleet” of Australian annals, sailed in March 1787 for New South Wales. This first fleet reached Botany Bay in January 1788, but passed on and landed at Port Jackson, where it entered and occupied the harbour of Sydney, one of the finest and most secure havens in the world. We shall return further on to the proceedings of these first criminal colonists when the progress of transportation as a secondary punishment will be described.

The penitentiary scheme was not, however, abandoned on the adoption of transportation to New South Wales. It was revived and kept alive by Jeremy Bentham, who in 1791 published a work on prison discipline entitled The, Panopticon or Inspection House, and followed it next year by a formal proposal to erect a prison house on his own plan. Bentham’s main idea was “a circular building, an iron cage glazed, a glass lantern as large as Ranelagh, with the cells on the outer circumference.” Within, in the centre, an inspection station was so fixed that every cell or part of a cell could be at all times closely observed,— the prisoners being themselves at liberty to communicate with visitors and make known their complaints by means of tubes. He hoped to effect much in the way of reformation from a system of solitude or limited seclusion, with constant employment on work in the profits of which the prisoners were to share. His project was warmly approved by Pitt, but secret influences—the personal hostility, it was said, of George III. to Bentham as an advanced Radical—hindered its adoption until 1794. A contract was then made between the treasury and Bentham, by which the latter was to erect a prison for a thousand convicts, with chapel and other necessary buildings, for <£19,000. A portion of this sum was advanced, and Bentham also acquired on behalf of the Government certain lands in the neighbourhood of Tothill Fields. But the undertaking languished, and never took practical shape. Nearly fifteen years later, when the penitentiary question was again revived, Bentham’s claims were referred to arbitration, and the Government proceeded to erect the prison on its own account, “fully recognizing the importance of attempting reformation by the seclusion, employment, and religious instruction of prisoners.” This had been tried already on a small scale but with satisfactory results, first at the Gloucester prison erected in 1791 and afterwards in the house of correction at Southwell. A larger and more ambitious experiment was resolved upon, worthy of the state; and the great penitentiary still standing after many vicissitudes, but practically unaltered, at Millbank was the result of this determination. It was built on the lands originally acquired by Bentham, and the work commenced in 1813 was continued at great outlay until 1816, when a portion was ready for the reception

of prisoners. A great flourish attended its opening. Its affairs were entrusted to a specially appointed committee of eminent and distinguished personages, the chairman being the Speaker of the House of Commons. Crowds of visitors—royal dukes, foreign princes, the élite of society —came to see the new prison; most elaborate arrangements were made for its internal government, and no money was spared either upon the staff or upon the completion of the buildings. The sum total expended upon the latter amounted to half a million of money, and the yearly charges of the establishment were a heavy burthen on the exchequer.

The erection of Millbank -was, however, a step in the right direction. The energy with which it was undertaken was the more remarkable because elsewhere throughout the United Kingdom the prisons, with but few exceptions, remained deplorably bad. Mr Neild, who in 1812 followed in the footsteps of John Howard, found that the old conditions, overcrowding and indiscriminate intercourse, remained unchanged. “The great reformation produced by Howard,” to use Neild’s own words, “was merely temporary; prisons were relapsing into their former horrid state of privation, filthiness, severity, and neglect.” Yet the legislature was alive to the need for prison reform. Besides the building of Millbank it had promulgated many Acts for the amelioration of prisoners. Jail fees were once more distinctly abolished; the appointment of chaplains was insisted upon; the erection of improved prison buildings was rendered imperative upon local authorities. But these with other and much older Acts remained in abeyance. Thus an Act which provided for the classification of prisoners had remained a dead letter; even the separation of the males from the females was not an universal rule. Humane provisions intended to secure the good government of prisons, their cleanliness and ventilation, and the proper supply of food, clothing, and bedding to the prisoners were still systematically ignored. Roused by these crying evils, a small band of earnest men, philanthropists and members of the Society of Friends, formed themselves into an association for the improvement of prison discipline, and devoted themselves with rare energy and singleness of purpose to their self-constituted task. They perambulated the country inspecting all the prisons; they issued lengthy interrogatories to prison officials; they published periodical reports giving the result of their inquiries, with their views on the true principles of prison management, and much sound advice, accompanied by elaborate plans, on the subject of prison construction. The labours of this society brought out into strong relief the naked deformity of the bulk of the British jails. It was the old story. Jails, speaking broadly, were lamentably inadequate for the numbers crowded into them. Hence there was the most terrible overcrowding: by day in some prisons it was nearly impossible to push through the throngs in the yards; by night the wretched prisoners ran the risk of suffocation. Prisoners were still very generally obliged to wear heavy irons. They had no regular diet—at best only dry bread. Speaking of St Albans from his personal observation, Mr Buxton, a most active member of the Society, says, “All were in ill health; almost all were in rags; almost all were filthy in the extreme. The state of the prison, the desperation of the prisoners, broadly hinted in their conversation and plainly expressed in their conduct, the uproar of oaths, complaints, and obscenity, the indescribable stench, presented together a concentration of the utmost misery and the utmost guilt.” This was no over-coloured picture; nor did it portray a solitary instance. The reports of the Society laid bare the existence of similar horrors in numbers of other jails. Yet this was in 1818, when the legislature was setting a praiseworthy example—when half a million had been spent in providing large airy cells for a thousand prisoners. Even in London itself, within easy reach of this palatial Millbank penitentiary, the chief prison of the city, Newgate, was in a disgraceful condition. This had been exposed by a parliamentary inquiry as far back as 1814, but nothing had been done to remedy the evils laid bare. All the shameful conditions of neglect, ill-treatment, and overcrowding were present in Newgate, and to the same extent as in any of the provincial prisons. The state of the female side had already attracted the attention of that devoted woman, Mrs Fry, whose ministrations and wonderful success no doubt encouraged, if they did not bring about, the formation of the Prison Society. Mrs Fry went first to Newgate in 1813, but only as a casual visitor. It was not till 1817 that she entered upon the great and noble work with which her name will ever be associated. She worked a miracle there in an incredibly short space of time. The ward into which she penetrated, although strongly dissuaded by the officials, was like a den of wild beasts; it was filled with women unsexed, fighting, swearing, dancing, gaming, yelling, and justly deserved its name of “hell above ground.” Within a month it was transformed, and presented, says an eye witness, “a scene where stillness and propriety reigned.” The wild beasts were tamed. It was not strange that such marvellous results should be bruited abroad, that public attention should be attracted to Mrs Fry’s labours, and that others should seek to follow in her footsteps. Movements similar to that which Mrs Fry headed were soon set on foot both in England and on the Continent, and public attention was generally directed to the urgent necessity for prison reform.

Stimulated no doubt by the success achieved by Mrs Fry, the Prison Discipline Society continued its useful labours. Hostile critics were not wanting; many voices were raised in protest against the ultra-humanitarianism which sought to make jails too comfortable and tended to pamper criminals. But the society pursued its way undeterred by sarcasm, through evil and good report striving earnestly after the objects it had in view. Many of these are now accepted as axioms in prison treatment. It is, for instance, established beyond question that female officers only should have charge of female prisoners, that prisoners of both sexes should be kept constantly employed. Yet these principles were unacknowledged at that time, and were first enunciated in Acts such as the 4 Geo. IV. c. 65 and the 5 Geo. IV. c. 85 (1823-24), the passing of which were mainly due to the strenuous exertions of the Prison Discipline Society. It was laid down in these that over and above safe custody it was essential to preserve health, improve morals, and enforce hard labour on all prisoners sentenced to it. These Acts also...